


But Once Put Out Thy Light

by am_bellanoire



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Character Death, F/F, Flashbacks, Prompt Fic, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2020-01-07 02:37:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18401435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/am_bellanoire/pseuds/am_bellanoire
Summary: “I don't know what I'd do if I didn't have you, every night, in my arms forever and always.”The brunette's responding smile was sugar sweet but the intensity in the stare she pinned Bellatrix with was utterly feral.“You never will know.”





	But Once Put Out Thy Light

Bellatrix had not looked like herself. And that was all Hermione could focus on. That. And the pain in the center of her chest that had not relented since she had discovered the body of her beloved, curled on her side of their bed in the early morning light three days prior. It was considered a peaceful death, to die in one's sleep. She supposed Bella deserved that. The witch had fought in two wars, had been chained in Azkaban prison for nearly two decades, had battled personal demons that most encountered only in their nightmares. But she had found love. Love in the brunette witch that stood before the freshly dug hole in the Black family cemetery where the stone coffin had been lowered and was now being covered by the disturbed moist earth. 

She was oblivious to everything around her. The way the dusk breeze caused her hair to blow about her face. The way her fingernails made crescent shaped indentations in the flesh of her clenched palms she held at her sides. The mourners – friends and family members – though few, stood at her back unable to offer any form of solace. The heavy lid of the coffin had been closed for a day and a half following a candlelit wake, but Hermione had sat beside it for just that long, forgoing all forms of sustenance or human need besides some sips of water she was quite sure were forced upon her without any knowledge of it. 

She had stared at Bellatrix's face. Taking in the smooth, alabaster visage, framed by wild dark curls, shot through with streaks of silver. As if the darkness and the light had waged a war and until the last vestiges of its strength had been snuffed out by its host's last breath, the darkness had held on. Those full lips that had paled in death, robbed of their reddish tint. Begging for eyelids to flutter open so that she might once again tumble into a sea of black even if for a moment. A second. Half of a second. But it was not the same. It wasn't her. Merely a shell of who she once had been. 

Twenty years they had had together. And still, it was not enough time. 

Her eyes were dry, her eyelashes not weighed down by the dampness of tears. She was all cried out. She had wept, she had sobbed, brokenly and bitterly. She had screamed. She had cursed fate. Now as she stood before what was Bellatrix's final resting place, Hermione's face was a stoic mask. Without reluctance or hesitation, she turned away from the mound of dirt to face those who stood behind her. A grim faced Harry Potter with his arm around his weepy eyed red haired wife, their three children, now grown behind them. Both of her sisters in law – Andromeda and Narcissa – who following the deaths of both their husbands had followed in the footsteps of their older sister and reclaimed their maiden name. The name Hermione too bore. A broken faced Teddy Lupin. Draco and his Astoria, their son Scorpius. And that was the full extent of the mourning party. 

Part of her wanted to say something. To thank them all for coming. Express some form of pleasantries that were expected of the widow on behalf of the union that had been ripped apart. She even cleared her throat as if the words might come. But they never did. And no one present seemed to be waiting for them. Because everyone present knew what was to come. She shook her head. And Disapparated on the spot. 

She came to in the center of the room she had not stepped foot in in three days. Merlin, it still smelled like her. All dark spices, pine needles, the way the air was scented after a heavy storm. 

_”Tell me you love me.” The words muttered on a growl against the shell of her lover's ear, the blunt edges of teeth nipping at the flesh, full lips tugging up at the corners into a smirk at the whimper that breached the sex charged air, “Tell me, pet. Tell me.”_

_“I love you, Bella. I love you, I love you.”_

Hot tears filled the brunette's eyes as she stood, staring at the bed and she did nothing to keep them from falling. Her chest felt heavy as if someone had hit her with a well aimed Stunner and her heart, it was a wonder it could be beating so fast when it had been cleaved in two. Merlin, she could still hear Bellatrix's voice if she concentrated. Still hear the way her beloved could pitch it high and childlike or low and sultry when it suited her. Could make a whisper sound louder than a scream and when riled up just enough, the volume she could get out of her throat could rival that of a dragon's call. 

It was as if with the flood of tears, a dam had been cracked and the memories filtered through her mind sure as if she had plunged her head into a Pensieve. They swam around in her mind space, filling her eardrums from the inside out. 

_“Why are you crying?”_

_A huff of annoyance that could have been a clever way to cover a sob. “I'm not crying, silly girl.”_

_Hermione gently cupped an alabaster cheek, allowing her thumb to brush away a rolling track of wetness. “Then what are these?”_

_“Shut up.”_

_Even clearly distressed there was so much pride on the dark witch's face and petulance in her tone. Dark brows furrowed over heavy lidded eyes and she tried to will the emotions away especially under the scrutiny. So much care and concern in that honey brown gaze and Bellatrix could not stand it._

_“What's wrong?” Hermone asked, tilting her head to one side, her thumb not stilling from its movements against her lover's cheek._

_Bellatrix sighed but she didn't shy away from the touch. “My thoughts run deep, pet,” she stepped closer to the young witch, pressing her cheek firmer against the warm palm, “You know this better than anyone. I can't understand how you can love me. How you can stand to be near me knowing there was once a time when I hated you. For no reason. Or a reason so insignificant it hardly counts as a reason. How could I ever hate you. How could I?”_

_“Do you love me, Bella.”_

_“More than anything I've ever loved in my life.” The words were both soft and rough at the same time, uttered around a crack of emotion._

_“Then love me. Today, tomorrow, and the day after that. Forget what has already been forgiven.”_

The brunette shook her head but it was useless. There was no clearing it now. And part of her wasn't sure she wanted it cleared. She never wanted to forget. Anything. Not a single moment of their time together. She wanted nothing to fade. Not even the pain. She wanted to hurt. 

It was a different kind of pain. Not sharp like a knife's blade or dull like an ache. It did not bleed because there was no wound. No, this was an emptiness. The strangest kind of hollowness that could not be rubbed away. As if on their own volition, her fingertips brushed the jagged edges of the long healed scar on her forearm. The skin tingled as if there was a live wire in her veins. Hermione bit her lip, trying to keep in the sob that threatened to burst forth. But it was a battle she could not win. 

Steeling her spine, Hermione crossed the room to the closet and stepped inside. There behind the rows of cloaks and robes – Merlin, her smell was stronger here and it made the brunette's knees buckle – was a safe. There were only two keys that opened it and now she was in possession of both. Slipping the brass pieces out of her pocket, she clutched them in the center of her clenched palm and tried to slow her breathing. She was beginning to feel light headed now, her heart quick as a fox chase, throwing itself against her rib cage. 

It was not supposed to be this way. The unfairness of it all. The fates had stolen her one source of true happiness after they had made it possible for her to fall in love with the same witch who had tortured her so viciously on the cold floor of a drawing room. Funny, she had thought it unfair back then too. Truly she did. But her tune had eventually changed. She was singing the old one now. 

Kneeling, Hermione pressed the key into the lock of the safe. It fit like a glove. All she had to do was turn it. 

_“I'm turning into a crone.”_

_The screechy indignation would have been comical if not for the evident distress on the older witch's face. Hermione paused from where she had been using her wand to fold the laundry and glanced up to meet the gaze of her lover in the vanity mirror._

_“A what?”_

_With a noise that sounded suspiciously like a growl, Bellatrix tossed the ornate hairbrush in her hands aside and whirled around to properly face the brunette. Her expression a perfect picture of fury. The look might have made a grown wizard shake in his dragon hide boots but Hermione was practically immune._

_“A hag. Look at all this silver. Centuries worth of 'pure' blood in my veins and my hair is going to shit. Soon I'll wither away and my bones will be dust.”_

_In fact the only thing her heart gave a nasty lurch to was the look of defeat that had crept into Bellatrix's dark eyes. She stood immediately and crossed the room in three strides, settling herself onto her lover's lap, lifting a hand to lazily wrap a snow colored curl around her finger._

_“Bella, it's just one little piece of grey. And you're beautiful. You'll always be beautiful to me.”_

_“Promise?” So much hope in that one word and Hermione couldn't help but press her lips to the corner of a pouting mouth, tracing the age lines embedded into the soft skin with the point of her tongue._

_“Cross my heart and hope to die.”_

With shaking hands, Hermione turned the small key in the lock, sliding the drawer open and removing the lacquered box. It was not very large nor was it heavy. Setting it down on the vanity, she lifted the lid, her eyes landing on the tiny glass vial sitting on a cloth of velvet. 

It was funny. She had been alive for forty years but it felt like twice that, thrice it even. That was the nature of war, she supposed. She had never had a childhood. The moment she had received her Hogwarts letter, she realized, she had had to grow up and not just because she was a Muggleborn thrust into a world she had never known existed. 

She didn't trust her fingers to keep their grip on the vial what with the way they were trembling. But her mind was already made up. It had been for a long long time. She had brewed this poison over a decade ago. This had always been the plan. And as she took a deep breath, recalling the last moments she had spent with her lover, she knew there was no coming back from this. 

_”I'm tired.”_

_Hermione looked over to where Bellatrix was curled up on her side of the bed. She turned the page of the book she was reading and returned her attention to the words._

_“Sleep then. I just have two chapters left and I can't go to bed before I find out how this ends.”_

_“No, I just mean, I'm tired.” It was not the protest the brunette had been expecting, the snide remark about being a 'bookworm', or caring about those dusty tomes more than her wife. But it got her attention just the same. Using her finger to mark her page, she closed the book and set it down on her lap._

_“Of what.”_

_Though Bellatrix was turned in her direction, she wasn't looking at her. She was staring at the flickering flame atop of the candle that sat on their bedside table, the reflection of the orange light in her eyes. “All my life I've been this witch that everyone feared and reviled. A wicked thing who probably deserved a Dementor's Kiss right out of her cradle. Then I met you and I did to you what I've done to so many others. Yet, you ended up loving me despite it all and in doing so gave me a gift that no one like me could ever deserve. You brought me back to life Hermione. I can't ever find the words to - “_

_“Hush now, Bella,” Hermione said with a shake of her head. While her tone could have been considered one of exasperation, the gentle caress she slid against a pale cheek was anything but, “you've nothing to thank me for. Get some rest. Tomorrow I'll make you breakfast in bed.”_

_“Those pancake things?” There was the makings of a smile in those words._

_“Mhm with extra butter and syrup.”_

_“Yes, yes, that sounds nice, pet.”She snuggled her face deeper into her pillow and let her eyes drift close as the younger witch retrieved her book and continued to read._

Hermione's hands were no longer trembling as she lifted the uncorked vial to her lips and tilted her head back. The taste was sweet. Not at all what she had been expecting. Honeyed almost as it covered her tongue, fragrant as the liquid invaded her sinuses. 

She swallowed and a smile spread across her face. It was the first time she had smiled since that morning. And as she lay down on Bellatrix's side of the bed, nuzzling the pillows that smelled like her lover even if they were cold, she sighed and drew her knees up to her chest. 

_”You make me happy.”_

_Hermione loved when Bella spoke in that droll, half sleepy tone. Loved it especially more when she traced nonsense patterns into her skin and her eyes glowed, darker than obsidian, soaking her up like two twin black holes. As if she could never get enough._

_“You make me happier.”_

_She shifted in her lover's embrace, pressing a kiss against the column of her throat and mewled as Bellatrix's grip tightened, their legs a tangled mess beneath the bed linens._

_“I don't know what I'd do if I didn't have you, every night, in my arms forever and always.”_

_The brunette's responding smile was sugar sweet but the intensity in the stare she pinned Bellatrix with was utterly feral._

_“You never will know.”_

Hermione's eyes fluttered shut, suddenly far too heavy to keep them open any longer. She could feel the beats of her heart slowing, spacing farther and farther apart. Her chest rattled as her breathing shallowed but there was no pain. It was a relief, really, when there had been so much of it for the past three days. To have it fade into nothingness. 

Gone. 

Bellatrix was gone. 

And so was she.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't usually write _sad_ stories but that was the prompt I was given and this was the saddest thing I could come up with. I'm pretty proud of it though and hope you all enjoyed the read! Feedback would be lovely and appreciated. 
> 
> Prompt: Tearjerker


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